Good news at last for anyone making a call whilst visiting foreign lands. Many of you will be aware that, simply by crossing a border, you have to pay extremely high call charges for texting or chatting to people and re-mortgage your house if you dare to make a data connection and surf the web. Over the next few years this is set to change quite radically here in Europe following moves by the European Commission to reduce charges charged by mobile operators to customers who roam.
For outgoing calls whilst roaming the new charges are 43 cents per minute (40p) per minute after July 2009, then 39 cents (36p) after July 2010 and 35 cents (32p) after July 2011. The European caps were brought in earlier than the mobile operators wanted and go a lot further than the GSM Association anticipated. Roaming costs for data will be 1 euro (92p) per MB from July 2009, 80 cents (74p) per MB from July 2010 and just 50 cents (46p) per MB from July 2011. Operators will also be forced to charge per second instead of rounding up, with a minimum 30 second call time being allowed.
These are absolute caps so you may see even cheaper prices appearing. Tariffs must als be approved by European parliament and member states, but this should signal the end to the constant worry when using yoru phone abroad.
Link – BBC News
Europe slashes mobile usage costs
March 26, 2009